Leadership

HBS Dean on the Future of Business Schools

By Sean Silverthorne

Updated on: May 12, 2009 / 10:03 AM EDT / MoneyWatch

Business schools including Harvard Business School must shoulder some of the blame in contributing to the economic crisis, but they are also part of the solution, according to HBS Dean Jay Light.

Writing on a Harvard Business Publishing series on the future of business education, Light writes that b-schools share some degree of culpability.

"As I have argued before, there were imbalances both on campuses and in the economy during an extended period of growth, where people became less focused on systemic risks and more focused on the upside and on making money," Light wrote. "I agree that we need to move that focus back toward the center."

But the argument that business schools and the MBA are the root cause of the global financial crisis "is simplistic nonsense that ignores the obvious reality of the many complex and interrelated factors that underlie the problem," according to Light.

The schools must now become part of the solution, and HBS is already making changes from lessons learned.

"At HBS, we are making changes in the way we teach risk management (without stifling the focus on innovation and entrepreneurialism), reconsidering the oversight responsibilities of directors, and revisiting the kinds of incentives provided by executive compensation packages. We will respond to the expanding interests of our students who are planning careers not only in traditional business settings, but in healthcare and science-based enterprises as well as non-profit and other social enterprises. And as we have seen all too clearly in the past year, we will need to equip our graduates to operate at the increasingly connected interface of business and government on a global basis."

The Harvard Business Publishing series How To Fix Business Schools is well worth your attention if you are interested in the future of business education, with posts from 30 academics, management experts, students, and journalists, as well as many observations from readers.

How do you think business schools must change?